The operative motto of all demagogic bloggers is: Why say something, when you can intimate it?
Some bloggers are now intimating that Linda McMahon, a Republican Party U.S. senatorial hopefull, approves necrophilia -- the last frontier among sexual liberationists -- simulated rape and public sex.
"As WWE chief operating officer, Linda McMahon presided over programming that showed simulated rape, public sex, and necrophilia, and now she wants to be our U.S. Senator?" asked Democratic spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan. "People across this state, not to mention the millions of women who are the victims of sexual violence every year, would be horrified and embarrassed to know that the person who seeks to represent them condones this kind of behavior. That kind of programming has no place in our society, and Linda McMahon has no place in the U.S. Senate."The questions asked by Democratic spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan were immediately picked up by progressive bloggers of every shape and hue, as well as some reporters minding the bunkers of what remains of a responsible press.
It turns out that spokeswoman Flanagan, according to an item written by Courant reporter and blogger Christopher Keating, “is a former employee of U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, and she now spends much of her time on the Senate race for the Democratic Party.”
Dodd – who along with former Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts several years ago made a sex sandwich of a waitress at a popular eatery in Washington DC – has affected a lofty indifference to the issues raised by his former employee.
In 1985, when Sen. Dodd was prowling Washington watering holes looking for nubile victims to sexually assault, he and a tipsy Kennedy happened upon waitress Carla Gaviglio at La Brasserie. Edward “The Masher” Kennedy body pressed the waitress on a table and then threw her onto the lap of his tag team partner Chris “The Crusher” Dodd.
With no exaggeration, one might score both Dodd and the late Edward Kennedy as someone who is indifferent to the plight of “the millions of women who are the victims of sexual violence every year,” while intimating that all women who plan to vote for Dodd in the upcoming election should be “embarrassed to know that the person who seeks to represent them condones this kind of behavior.”
Indeed, not only did Dodd “condone” this errant behavior, he practiced it.
After these moves, Dodd’s reticence in participating directly in the intimation game becomes understandable.
According to Keating: “Dodd, though, largely stayed out of the controversy when asked by The Hartford Courant on Friday afternoon in Hartford.
“’I'll let the Republican opponents deal with her on that,’ Dodd said.”
Is it not an agile move of the part of Dodd to muddy a possible opponent by proxy?
Brett "The Hitman" Hart would approve.
Speaking through her spokesperson Ed Patru, McMahon attempted a defense of sorts against the imputation that she approves of necrophilia: “McMahon's spokesman, Ed Patru, said Dodd and his supporters should be more interested in improving the economy than in worrying about professional wrestling.
"Every American understands the difference between scripted television entertainment and real life betrayal of trust by Washington politicians,'' Patru said, "With 15 million Americans out of work, a jobless rate in Connecticut pushing 9 percent, people want a Senator who knows how to fix the economy and put people back to work. It's stunning that Chris Dodd's apologists are more concerned with television programming that isn't real than the Senator's record of taking every bit of special interest cash he can find, providing taxpayer-funded bonuses to executives he was supposed to regulate, and falling asleep at the switch while the entire country's banking system crashed.''
This is how it goes in the new journalism, where the line between genuine reportage and charges bordering on slander are blurred. In wrestling, the lines between reality and appearance are blurred. And there is much that the new journalism has in common with wrestling: Ditto with the new politics.
Comments
As a mother, I am disgusted at the violent and sexually perverse garbage that the WWE presents as "family entertainment."
Maybe in Linda McMahon's family, but not in decent families.
Shame on you for trying to excuse this.
I would no more blame McMahon’s lack of decency on Dodd than I would blame Dodd’s lack of decency on McMahon. Grown-ups are responsible for what they do, including journalists and faux journalists who have strongly suggesting that McMahon approves of necrophilia. We know she approves of tasteless entertainment, which is not the same thing.